Chris Mathews Blames NRA For Navy Yard Shooting

Chris Matthews has long been known for not pulling punches and hatred of the NRA.

Both traits came into play yesterday when he openly blamed the NRA for the tragic Navy Yard shootings in Washington.

Did the NRA have anything to do with the attacks? No. The NRA obviously doesn’t condone violence and there is no proof Aaron Alexis was even a member.

Just Chris Matthews being Chris Matthews I guess…

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After Monday’s shooting at the Washington Navy Yard, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews predictably blamed the National Rifle Association, even though the gun rights group had absolutely nothing to do with the shooting, Newsmax reported.

According to Matthews, while average members of the group aren’t criminals, their opposition to gun control laws allows “bad people” to get guns.

“These could be good people doing bad things,” he said.

“The United States has a hell of a lot of guns. It has a hell of a lot of gun owners, not just NRA members,” he added.

“A h-ll of a lot of guns in the hands of a h-ll of a lot of people, and it’s very easy to get a gun. The question is, what makes us uniquely bad in that direction?” he asked Mark Glaze, director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the anti-gun group that got shellacked in the recent Colorado recall election.”

Glaze said the problem lies in the inability of the country to regulate guns.

“People in the United Kingdom are not more mentally ill than we are. They watch the same video games and movies,” he said, while claiming that the United States has 12,000 firearm homicides every year compared to 45 or 50 for the UK.

But Glaze was only off by a few thousand homicides in the United States.

According to FBI crime data for 2011, a total of 12,664 homicides took place in the United States. Of those, 8583 were committed with a firearm and 1,694 were committed with a knife or other sharp instrument.

In the same year, 577 homicides were committed in England and Wales, with 39 of those reportedly caused by a firearm. A majority of homicides were reportedly committed with knives or other sharp instruments.

A post at the American Thinker explains that because of the difference in population, a more accurate number is the murder rate per 100,000. The population of the United States is about 5.6 times greater than England and Wales.

When looked at in those terms, the numbers are quite different.

In 2010/11, for example, the murder rate in the U.S. in 2011 was 4.7 per 100,000 inhabitants, while the rate in England and Wales was 1.15.

But the rate of violent crime in the UK is far higher than the U.S., the American Thinker said.

In 2011, there were 386.3 violent crimes per 100,000 inhabitants in the United States compared to over 2,000 in the UK.